


I don't want to

by ShadowSelene (Shadowdianne)



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-14
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2020-03-05 14:58:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18830998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowdianne/pseuds/ShadowSelene
Summary: "why do you just accept things?" Bring on the angstAsked by emettkaysworld via tumblr





	I don't want to

 

 (1)

 “Sometimes you need to accept things as they come.”

The words were said in a soft yet tired tone. The kind of one Emma had learnt to recognize even if she still hadn’t celebrated her eighth birthday yet. It was the kind of tone adults liked to use around her, the one she had learnt to rise her chin to, feigning a pride she fully well knew it wasn’t true. Not anymore.

So she remained silent as the man smiled at her, the man who had patted her head the first time she had spent a night there with a tender softness to it that had made her hope more than she should have.  She bit on her bottom lip as she saw him pick up the small suitcase she had brought with her; the exterior of it already folded onto itself: dirty and dusty despite the shy tries a few of her foster families had given to keep it clean.

Sighing and following him down the corridor, leaving the room she knew would be filled by another child quicker than her file would be put back into the constant roulette, she didn’t spare a single glance at her back. She had come to learn to accept it. She still hoped, every time, but she had begun to learn to go to that jaded, hardened place some of the older children spoke about between self-deprecating peals of laughter.

The ones Emma felt squeamish about. The ones that made her think if she ever would be like them.

For the time being, however, she followed the man: her shy attempt at calling him “dad” echoing on empty walls.

 (2)

The calendar mocked at her from where she had stuck it into the wall opposite to the small mirror she had. Numbers written in red for weekends and black for weekdays were the smiles she still could see on the eyes of the adults that lurked around the home she was currently in and she swallowed down a sob as she kept looking at it, at the reflection of it, while she stood in front of the far too old mirror, the glass cracked and black-spotted near the frame.

She didn’t want to cry, she told herself as she run a hand through her hair; short, shorter than she would have liked it; uneven at places after the last lice scare some of the younger ones had brought with them from school. She didn’t want to cry, she whispered, chapped lips trembling as she lowered her hand, pressing her fingers into her chest until her nails created scalding hot pain points. The ones she reveled into, the ones she felt she was able to control.

She needed to accept it. She said to herself as she stared at the calendar, the date of her 17th birthday not marked but just as present as if would have drawn a giant neon-colored circle around it.

One more year, she told herself, one more year before she would have grown out of the system. A system that didn’t care about her, a system that had already left her behind.  And there was no point on denying it, on deluding herself with the idea that she was still eligible. Brutal laughter rattling her bones from within as she swallowed down every bit of the nostalgia she once had had about a family she had never had been granted to experience. She could only accept it and so she did.

 (3)

She closed the door of her car on the young man’s face, the satisfaction of a job well done still new enough, powerful enough, for her to feel almost intoxicated by it. Red leather jacket on her back, she jiggled her keys of the car on her right hand, tattoo peeking from the sleeve, the dark splotch sobering her happiness in a way that made her lips curve downwards, man momentarily forgotten.

She rarely thought on Lily, despite the tattoo imprinted on her skin. The girl, however, her memory, the memory of something, something else, always made her wonder where she could have ended up if she had stayed with her, if Neal had stayed.

The two of them were different, separated by time and age yet them both represented a glimmer, a shadow, of a future. Growling between clenched teeth, the blonde refrained herself from grasping the swan pendant that still hung from her neck, the glimpse of a baby’s face momentarily filling her mind.

She had given him away, she had needed to, she had accepted the fact in the same way she had swallowed down the betrayal, the hurt, that had come from Lily’s lies, from Neal’s betrayal. Accepting it, however, didn’t make it any easier.

“Hey bitch!”

The man’s scream, muffled by the car’s window, brought her back to the present, the warmth radiating from the asphalt hitting her as she blinked, eyes glazed, stinging, but dry. Jaw clenched, she hit the window with her fist, the shocking wave of pain that traveled up her muscles making her wince, even if she tried to hide the fact.

“Don’t ever call me that.”

She had done the right thing. She had.

(4)

Emma stared at Regina’s retreating form until nothing but the nighttime breeze and the echoing laughter from within the diner remained in the middle of the street. Hugging herself into her oversized coat, she pressed her lips together wondering, yet again, why she had invited the brunette woman. A question Mary Margar… no, Snow, had asked her with worried glances and not so subtly mutters.

That alone was another thing, another thread, she didn’t feel comfortable enough to even think about it. How the woman who had become her tentative friend, the first one she had been able to consider that in years, had turned out to be her mother. It seemed ridiculous, stupid, a bad trip. Yet, with the curse, with magic or power or whatever they liked to call it, she could see the similarities on their shared chin, on the way their eyes curved in the same way. Genetic clues she had spent years trying to decipher, trying to follow to somewhere further than the middle of the road she hadn’t been able to find.

A question she now held the answer to.

Lowering her arms, thumbs looping around her belt, fingers drumming atop her jeans, she wondered yet again if she would ever be able to look at the woman that looked even younger than she was and see something else, someone else, than her roommate. She felt panic rising up her throat at the mere thought of it however, the sheer pressure of how easy the other woman had decided to embrace her new role crushing her shoulders, her lungs.

She didn’t truly have any other way of going about it though; she knew it. She could see it on Henry’s eyes, on the way the kid looked at her as if she was able to hang the moon. At the way others stared at her; titles like princess, heiress, still too complicated for her tongue to form them, for her mind to accept it.

Yet, she would need to accept it. There was no point on fighting it. Was it?

She could always leave. The thought died just as quickly as it had appeared just as she turned on her boots, facing the dinner once more, Regina’s residual warmth already gone from the air around her.

She wouldn’t leave. Not now. Which only meant… play by their rules.

Whatever those were.

(5)

"Why do you just accept things?"

Regina’s voice wasn’t cold or cruel, but Emma flinched at the words all the same with lips still tender by a kiss that shouldn’t have happened, with words as heavy as lead hanging from her lips, dripping into her hands as she still clutched to Regina’s hair, close, far too close for her to be able to breathe properly.

She was able to feel the current of electricity running up and down her veins, the way it made her muscles twitch as she closed her eyes, blind to everything else that wasn’t Regina; Regina’s touch, Regina’s skin. Even the ring on her hand and vows she would give in less than an hour felt tamer, forgettable, as she licked her lips, tasting Regina’s lipstick and that very same something that she had linked to the brunette far too long ago.

“What?” She heard her answer, felt her mouth move, yet her voice sounded strange, far away from her, as if coming from a place that wasn’t truly hers anymore and she swallowed down a sob as Regina rose her chin, gently, two fingers on her, an almost ghost-like pressure that still felt as if scorching her.

“Why do you just accept things?”

It was more complicated than that. The old explanation flew to her lips, but she refused to say it knowing full well Regina wouldn’t accept it, couldn’t accept it. Not if Emma didn’t even believe on it anymore.

Hadn’t she said a similar message to Ashley once upon a time? When she still compartmentalized herself in a way that felt right. When she hadn’t fallen into the trap of cutting herself in smaller pieces, when she still kept herself complete and whole.

She could feel another ugly sob crawling up her throat, opening her up from the insides, making her bleed as she felt her knees tremble; weak and built upon the concept of admission rather than acceptance.

“Emma.”

It was tender, far too tender and Emma desired it to be full of ire and anger, things she would be able to walk off. But there was no trace of that as she opened her eyes again; Regina’s lips still far too close.

“I don’t want to accept them.”


End file.
